There was a federal assault weapons ban from 1994 to 2004.

Yes, and there have been additional law and rules changes since then (NICS, trusts, etc). Thus the number of laws and rules are not substantially lower than in the recent past.

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kasey_junk 5 days ago | parent [-]

Access to assault weapons is substantially easier now than it was in 1996. There maybe the same number of laws or whatever but in real terms access is easier now than then.

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giantg2 5 days ago | parent [-]

And what does that access mean? How many of the weapons used in school shootings would have been banned? They've done studies on the effectiveness of the ban and showed no real effect over that decade, but speculated that there could have been an effect if it went on longer. The other issue is that the ban was largely cosmetic and could easily be avoided by not including certain features that have limited utility in most domestic shootings anyways (launcher lug, flash hider, etc) as evidenced by continued AR-15 post-ban model production. So to me, the claim that there is more accessibility doesn't provide any evidence of causality.

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kasey_junk 5 days ago | parent [-]

I’m not making a claim about the usefulness. You made a claim about access not changing. That’s simply untrue. Access has gone up.

As for the feature bans those are clearly municipalities attempts to get around either constitutional or political impediments to the bans people actually want. Magazines fed semi automatic rifles are what people want to ban, banning rifles with muzzle shrouds is how they get there.

Studies on this topic are fraught because the gun industry has long prevented the normal research funding issues on this topic and have fought tooth and nail any data collection efforts.

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potato3732842 5 days ago | parent [-]

You're doing a very good job dancing around the fact that you don't actually know much about the subject. The points you're making could be backed up really easily, no citing of cherry picked studies or reports needed, if you knew what to google, but you don't. And you're way off in the weeds with the whole AWB and rifles things.

Yes there's more legal access federally than in the 90s but the difference is pretty much wholly on a state by state basis with some states having no or slight change and some states having large change.

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kasey_junk 4 days ago | parent [-]

I think you maybe arguing with someone else. They made a straight forward claim that is incorrect:

> If we are only looking at the federal level, then there has been no substantial reduction.

There _was_ a significant reduction at the federal level. They acknowledged that and then changed the goalpost.

I then claimed

> Studies on this topic are fraught because the gun industry has long prevented the normal research funding issues on this topic and have fought tooth and nail any data collection efforts.

This is true. The Dickey Amendment prevented first the CDC and then the NIH from collecting gun violence statistics from 1996 until today. Though in 2018 they were able to add a rider to it to make it a little easier.

FOPA makes it impossible to collect registration information for federal use, including in data exchange for studies around gun ownership.

I'm not sure what more you want me to backup. Would you like the actual legal citations on those?

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potato3732842 4 days ago | parent [-]

>I'm not sure what more you want me to backup. Would you like the actual legal citations on those?

Screeching about whatever fed law changes or lack thereof the Brady Campaign told you to screech about is pointless. Fed law directly affects only a tiny minority of buyers because people buy what's available and no recent federal law changes have increased/decreased the legal buyer pool and sales volume.

You don't need the CDC or the NIH or whatever other "authoritative" source who's boot you prefer the flavor of in order to make assessments of how things have changed over time. State law changes and sales data are very easy to come by. Those are where the real meat of the change is. Many states over the past 20yr went from it being a hassle to "just toss a pink Ruger in your purse" to a simple retail transaction.

	▲	kasey_junk 4 days ago \| parent [-]
		Gotcha.

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potato3732842 5 days ago | parent | prev [-]

You mean the "ban on a random assortment of features that accomplished approximately nothing"? I think his point stands. Federally not much has changed.